Why medicines do not work on viruses? What do vaccines do?

Antibiotic medicines don’t work on viruses. In fact, taking antibiotics to try and treat viral illnesses might make us all sicker in the future.

How antibiotics work

Antibiotics are used to treat infections caused by bacteria. Bacteria are very small organisms, and billions of them live in and on your body. Most of the time these bacteria are harmless or even helpful for your body, like those that help you to digest food, but some bacteria can cause diseases.

There are two types of antibiotics that work to stop bacterial infections. Some slow down the growth of bacteria and damage their ability to reproduce and spread, while others kill the bacteria by destroying the bacteria cell walls. The choice of antibiotic depends on the type of bacteria.

Why don’t antibiotics work on viruses?

Viruses are different from bacteria; they have a different structure and a different way of surviving. Viruses don’t have cell walls that can be attacked by antibiotics; instead, they are surrounded by a protective protein coat.

Unlike bacteria, which attack your body’s cells from the outside, viruses actually move into, live in, and make copies of themselves in your body’s cells. Viruses can't reproduce on their own as bacteria do, instead, they attach themselves to healthy cells and reprogram those cells to make new viruses. It is because of all of these differences that antibiotics don’t work on viruses.

How can we treat a viral infection?

You might have heard the phrase that a virus has to ‘run its course’. This means waiting for your body’s immune system to fight off the viral infection by itself by activating an immune response. If you have a cold or the flu, during this time you might experience symptoms like:

-a runny or blocked nose

-sore throat

-headache

-fever

-cough

-and muscle aches.

Resting in bed, drinking plenty of fluids (particularly water), and taking over-the-counter medication to relieve symptoms will help you recover from a virus. This is generally enough for otherwise healthy people. In some cases, your GP may prescribe antiviral medications to help reduce the severity and length of your illness.

Most importantly, you can help protect yourself from catching viral infections like the flu by getting a flu vaccine. The flu vaccine changes every year, so it is important to get a new one before winter each year.

What is Vaccine?

A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins, or one of its surface proteins. The agent stimulates the body's immune system to recognize the agent as a threat, destroy it, and to further recognize and destroy any of the microorganisms associated with that agent that it may encounter in the future.

Vaccination

Vaccination is the most effective method of preventing infectious diseases; widespread immunity due to vaccination is largely responsible for the worldwide eradication of smallpox and the restriction of diseases such as polio, measles, and tetanus from much of the world. The effectiveness of vaccination has been widely studied and verified; for example, vaccines that have proven effective include the influenza vaccine

Covid 19

Vaccines work with your immune system and strengthen the immune system so your body will be ready to fight the virus if you are exposed.